In Robert Marzano’s book, Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on what works in schools. (ASCD, 2004), Marzano outlines six steps for maximum vocabulary instruction. They are: 1.  Provide a description, explanation or example of the new term. 2. Ask students to restate this in their own words. 3. Ask students to draw a [...]

Add a little fun and excitement to your student’s lives by helping them learn their vocabulary words in a game format. Run off blank Bingo cards for your class with the “free” space filled in on each card. Provide your students with a list of the vocabulary words you want them to practice and have [...]

According to Snow et al, (1998) children learn on the average of 7 words per day which is a lot of words! To help students focus on vocabulary building as they hear them in their every day world, have a special area in your classroom where students can add their new and interesting words. Have [...]

I hear a lot of comments from 4-12 teachers that students have difficulty with the vocabulary in their content area. One of the best ways to help students learn vocabulary is to identify the key affixes (prefix, suffix and root word parts) for your content area and directly teach this to students. For example, a [...]

One of the characteristics that separate good readers from poor readers is the size of a person’s vocabulary. As teachers, we can help build our student’s vocabularies in one of three ways: the first way is by promoting wide and extensive reading in the classroom. The second way is by encouraging students to experiment and [...]